Rescue Me
They’d planted their own explosives and lit that building up and up and up. Concrete and dust and debris had rained down for several minutes. “We may have underestimated the English we put on it.” Actually they hadn’t known about a hidden room under the mud and concrete building, filled with grenades and bombs, until they’d lit it up and the explosion grew bigger and bigger and they’d dived for cover. No one wanted to talk about the oversight though. It was just a damn good thing they’d moved way back and no one got hurt.
Wilson laughed. “ ‘There’s enough bang in there to blow us to Jesus.’ ” He was a lieutenant, smart as hell, and the king of movie quotes. Vince hadn’t seen Pete for a while, and it was good to see his buddy.
“ Hooyah! ” The two had gone through BUD/S together, almost drowned in the surf, and had their asses chewed by Instructor Dougherty. He’d stood next to Wilson as they’d both had their Tridents pinned on their dress uniforms, and he’d stood up with Pete when Pete married his high school sweetheart. The marriage hadn’t lasted past the five-year anniversary, and Vince had been there to help his buddy drown his sorrows. Divorce was a reality of military life, and operational SEALs were no exception to that reality.
The loading ramp rose, and the pilot fired up the huge turbo-prop freighter, filling the cavity with the rattle of steel and horsepower and ending any further conversation.
He fell asleep somewhere over the Gulf of Oman. The last untroubled slumber he would have for several years. Once the Hercules touched down in Bagram, his life would change forever in varied and unforeseeable ways.
His life was different now, but the dream was always the same. It started in the mountains in the Hindu Kush with him and the guys on a routine mission. Then the dream changed, with him scrambling for cover, loaded down with enough firepower to fight his way out of any Taliban fight. It ended with him kneeling over Wilson, his head spinning and ringing, nausea turning his stomach and the dark corners of his vision closing in on him as he thumped his best friend’s chest and forced his own breath into Pete’s lungs. The unmistakable beat of howling U.S. airpower, rotors screaming, thundering and whipping the dust into sandstorms. The ground shuddered as the military blew the hell out of slopes and crevasses of the Hindu Kush Mountains. Blood stained his hands as Vince thumped and breathed and watched the light fade from Pete’s eyes.
Vince woke, his heartbeat pounding in his head as it had that day in the hell of the Hindu Kush. He stood somewhere, disoriented, his eyes wide, lungs pulling air like bellows. Where was he?
In a room. A soft streetlamp burned in the distance and lacy curtains were wrapped about his fist.
“You okay, Vince? I heard thumpin’.”
He opened his mouth but a gaspy wheeze came out. He swallowed. “Yeah.” He purposefully opened his shaking hands and the curtain fell to the floor, the thin rod a tinny clang.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Everything is okay.”
“Is someone climbing in your window? If so, have her use the front door.”
Which would explain why she wasn’t busting down his door.
“No one’s in here but me. Good night, Aunt Luraleen.”
“Well, night then.”
Vince scrubbed his face with his hands and sat on the too small, too frilly bed. He hadn’t had that dream in a while. Not for a few years now. A Navy shrink had once told him that certain things could trigger posttraumatic stress. Change and uncertainty were two of the big ones.
Vince was a SEAL. He did not have PTSD. He wasn’t jumpy or nervous or depressed. He had a recurring nightmare.
One. That was it.
That shrink had also told him that he’d shut down his feelings. And that as soon as he started to feel, he would heal. “Feel to heal” had been that shrink’s favorite catchphrase.
Well fuck that. He didn’t need to heal from anything. He was fine.
Chapter Nine
E very year on the second Saturday in April, the Lovett Founder’s Day kicked off at nine A.M. with the Founder’s Day parade. Ever year, the reigning Diamondback Queen rode a huge rattlesnake made of tissue and toilet paper. Its big head and bejeweled eyes looked out at the crowd while its forked tongue flicked the morning air. The queen sat atop the coiled body, waving for all she was worth, like she was the Rose Queen making her way down Colorado Boulevard in
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